Exposed

by Judith Graves

  “That thing hates me. Okay, see you after school.”

  “You should be in school too, you know. Bentley can get you into any school you want. I hate to see that great mind going to waste.”

  “What great mind? Your blow-dryer has fried it already. No more school talk. I told you guys I’d think about it. Between you and Bentley, I get a lecture every day.” Jo laughed. “Wait a minute. Should you be in a class right now?”

  “Busted.” I grinned into the midday sky and ended the call. A flock of sparrows flittered by, coming to settle in a spruce tree beside the school. I sat on the school roof, watching their antics. I let my legs dangle over the edge and tapped my heels on the brick facade. The lightheartedness I’d felt while talking with Jo slipped away all too easily.

  A week after my sixteenth birthday, and nothing was as I had imagined it would be.

  The warehouse had been sectioned off as a crime-scene investigation. Diesel, Wheels and Thing 1 and Thing 2 had been taken into custody. They’d been exposed for what they were. Users. Men who preyed on the innocent.

  The files we’d saved on the USB drive had also been emailed directly to the police chief. Who would probably set up another investigation to uncover who exactly had fed him information not once but twice in the space of a few weeks. Information that had led to the investigation of several members of city council, police officers and who knew who else.

  I leaned back, raised my face to the sun and braced my weight with my hands.

  Who would have thought a handful of kids could cause so much damage? Or do so much good? And we weren’t done yet. Bentley had eliminated all traces of the warehouse kids from Diesel’s files but had saved them for me. I was slowly working on the list of names. Tracking down the kids who’d left the warehouse. Some had moved out of the city, but a few were close by, and everything I feared about Diesel had come to light. These kids hadn’t been set free; they’d just gone into other forms of servitude, trapped by guys like Diesel or worse.

  If they’d accept my help, I would do all I could to get them out. So far, they’d just told me to get away as fast as I could and not look back. But I hadn’t launched my houseboat yet. There were still things keeping me fixed in place.

  I reached into my hoodie pocket and took out the glass raven Diesel had given me. Remembering everything it represented. I might be staying, but I wasn’t caged. Not anymore. I stared at it for a few seconds, then fired the delicate ornament off the roof. It smashed to the ground and disintegrated into a fine dust.

  A shadow blocked the sun. “Is that what you do when you come up here? Destroy things?”

  Emmett stood over me. He approached slowly, one eye on me and the other on the drop to the school parking lot.

  Stifling a laugh, I sat up and stared out at the day. Emmett sat beside me, slow and steady, as if every movement would send him over the edge. I guessed he hadn’t scaled the wall like I had.

  “Don’t like heights?” I smirked.

  “Hate them with a passion.” Emmett’s tone was conversational, casual, but his rapid breathing betrayed him. The guy was freaked, but he’d come after me anyway. I decided not to ride him too much.

  “Found the ladder, did you?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  We didn’t speak for a while, just absorbed the day and the feeling of being close to each other.

  “I guess you’re waiting for me to say thank you.” I shot him a look. “You didn’t have to send your dad, but you did. You could have given him my name, but you didn’t. So thank you.”

  He dipped his head. “You’re welcome.” He cautiously turned to face me. “I still have questions.”

  I nodded.

  “And you’re still not going to answer them.”

  I gave a slow smile as I shook my head. Nope, he’d get no answers from me. But I gave him something, at least. “If you want this to work, you just have to accept that there are some things I can’t tell you.”

  “Or what? You’ll have to kill me?”

  I gave him a pointed stare. “It’s not just me that’s at risk. I’m not going to put you or anyone else in danger. Can you accept that?”

  “For now.” His eyes narrowed.

  I braced myself for more. More questions. More demands.

  Then he sighed. Relaxed. Got lost in the view. He seemed to get over his fear. A bit. “You know, this is amazing.” We stared at the city and mountains in the distance. He linked his fingers with mine. I didn’t pull away.

  I did what I’d been scared to do before.

  I pulled him closer.

  Our lips pressed together just as my cell phone thrummed the opening bass riff of an old song. I slapped my hand over my jeans pocket, muffling the sound.

  Emmett let out a low laugh, his breath warm on my lips. “Are the ’80s calling?”

  I groaned. “That dude really is a lady. But she’s really becoming a pain.”

  Emmett jerked his chin back. “What?”

  Regretfully, I ran my finger over his bottom lip. “I have to get this. Give me five?”

  “How about we meet back on solid ground?” Emmett stood, brushed off his jeans and backed slowly away from the edge of the roof.

  “Wow,” I said into my phone, watching Emmett head for the access ladder. “You are a real mood killer.”

  “All part of my charm.” I heard the smile in Jo’s voice. “Jace just called.” There was a long pause.

  “And…” I prompted into the silence.

  “Annndd, he wants me, well, us…”

  I laughed. “You tromped on my Emmett time to tell me something I figured out eons ago? Look, you like him. That’s great. He likes you too. Just don’t lose your head over him, Jo. You don’t know anything about him. Not really.”

  “I know he needs our help.” Her tone was all business. “It’s his father. He’s evil, and he needs to be stopped. We can help make that happen.”

  As she filled me in, any thoughts of razzing her about Jace completely slid from my mind.

  Whoa.

  My stomach rolled at the thought of what their father had put Bentley through.

  Yes, the man had to be stopped.

  I just hoped the guys were ready for the fallout, because if Jo and I were going to risk everything we’d just gotten back into our own hands—our lives, our freedom—we were going to make sure we had our backs covered.

  I stared out at the afternoon sky and helped plot the downfall of one major evildoer.

  What goes around, comes around.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Sigmund and Natasha for creating such awesome characters, and three cheers to Andrew and the fantastic team at Orca.

  Award-winning writer and screenwriter JUDITH GRAVES loves tragic romance, werewolves, vampires, magic and all things a bit creepy. A firm believer that teen fiction can be action-packed, snarky and yet hit all the right emotional notes, Judith writes stories with attitude. She lives in northern Alberta, and when she’s not writing she works in a school library. For more information, visit www.judithgraves.com.